While Roberto wondered what the use could be of this contraption, Father Caspar unwrapped the folded skin, which was revealed as the perfect case, or glove, or thimble of that metallic apparatus, over which it easily fit, fixed by some hooks on the inside so that once assembled, the apparatus could not be unsheathed. And the finished object was, in effect, a cone without a tip, open at the top and at the base—or, if you like, indeed, a kind of bell. On it, between the top and the middle circles, there was a little glass window. To the roof of the apparatus a sturdy ring had been attached.
At this point the bell was shifted towards the windlass and hooked to an arm that through a clever system of pulleys allowed it to be raised, lowered, lifted over the rail, hoisted aboard, or unloaded like any bale or case or package of cargo.
The windlass was a bit rusty after many days of disuse, but finally Roberto managed to operate it and raise the bell to half its height, so that its interior could be observed.
This bell now awaited only a passenger, who would step inside, fasten the straps, then dangle in the air like a clapper.
A man of any stature could enter it: he had only to adjust the harness, loosening or tightening buckles and knots. Now, once he was well fastened, the inhabitant of the bell could walk, carrying his little cockpit with him, and the straps kept the head at the level of the window, while the lower edge came more or less to his calf.
Now Roberto had only to imagine, the triumphant Father Caspar explained, what would happen when the windlass lowered the bell into the sea.
“What happens is that the passenger drowns,” Roberto concluded, as anyone would have. And Father Caspar accused him of knowing very little about the “equilibrium of liquors.”
“You may possibly think that the Void exists somewhere, as those ornaments of the Synagogue of Satan may have told you when you in Paris spent all your time with them. But you will perhaps admit that in the bell there is not the Void but air. And when you have a bell full of air lowered into the water, the water does not enter. Either it, or air.”
That was true, Roberto admitted. And no matter how deep the sea was, a man could walk without any water entering, at least until the passenger, with his breathing, had not consumed all the air, transformed it into vapor (as you see when you breathe on a mirror) which, being less dense than water, would yield space to it—definitive proof, Father Caspar commented, exultant, that Nature has a horror of the Void. But with a bell of that size, the passenger could count on at least thirty minutes’ respiration, he calculated.
The shore seemed very far away, if it were to be reached by swimming, but, walking, it would be a stroll, because almost at the halfway point between ship and shore lay the coral barrier—where the boat had not been able to follow a direct course but instead made a wider curve beyond the promontory. And in certain stretches the coral was at the water’s surface. If the expedition were begun in a period of reflux, the walking to be done underwater would be further reduced. It would suffice to reach that emergent land, and as soon as the occupant climbed up, even moving only one foot, the bell would again fill with fresh air.
But how could anyone walk on the sea bed, which must bristle with dangers, and how could he climb up on the barrier, which was composed of sharp stones and corals still sharper? And, further, how would the bell descend without capsizing in the water, or without being thrust up, for the same reasons that a diver returns to the surface?
With a shrewd smile Father Caspar said that Roberto had forgotten the most important objection: that the air-filled bell, pushed into the sea, would displace an amount of water equal to its mass, and this water would weigh far more than the body trying to penetrate it, to which therefore much opposing resistance would be offered. But in the bell there would also be many pounds of man, and, further, there were the metal buskins. And, with the look of someone who has thought of everything, he went and fetched from the inexhaustible soda a pair of boots with iron soles about five fingers thick, fastening at the knee. The iron would serve as ballast, and would also protect the feet of the explorer. They would slow his progress but spare him those concerns for the rough terrain that as a rule enforce a cautious tread.
“But if you have to climb to the shore from the depths here, it will be uphill all the way!”
“You were not here when we dropped anchor! I the first sounding made. No depths! If the Daphne went a little more ahead, it would run aground!”
“But how can you support the bell, its weight all on your head?” Roberto asked. And Father Caspar reminded him that in the water he would not feel this weight, and Roberto would know this if he had ever tried to push a boat, or extract from a tub an iron ball with his hand: the effort all came after you had pulled it out, not while it was still immersed.
In the face of the old man’s stubbornness, Roberto tried to postpone the moment of his destruction. “But if the bell is lowered with the windlass,” he asked, “how do we unhook the cable afterwards? If we do not, the rope will hold you here, unable to move away from the ship.”
Caspar answered that once he was on the bottom, Roberto would know, because the rope would slacken; and at that point he was to cut it. Did he perhaps think Caspar would come back by the same means? Once on the Island, he would go and recover the boat, and with that he would come back, God willing.
But as soon as he was on shore, when he had freed himself from the straps, the bell—if another windlass did not keep it aloft—would slump to the ground, imprisoning him. “Do you want to spend the rest of your life on an island, trapped inside a bell?” And the old man replied that once he had freed himself from those underpants, he had only to slash the hide with his knife, and he would emerge like Minerva from Jove’s head.
And what if, in the water, he encountered a big fish of some man-eating species? Father Caspar burst out laughing: surely the most ferocious of fish, encountering in its path a self-moving contraption capable of frightening even a human, would rapidly flee in bewilderment.
“In short,” Roberto concluded, sincerely concerned for his friend, “you are old and frail. If someone has to make this test, it will be me!” Father Caspar thanked him but explained that he, Roberto, had already given ample evidence of being a scatterbrain, and heaven only knows what a botch he would make of it. He, Caspar, already had some knowledge of that body of water and of the reef, and he had seen similar reefs elsewhere from a flatboat; this bell he had built himself and therefore knew its merits and defects; he had a good notion of hydrostatic physics and would know how to deal with unforeseen circumstances; and, he added, as if presenting the ultimate argument in his favor, “after all, I have the faith, and you not.”
And Roberto understood that this was not by any means the last consideration: it was the first, and surely the most beautiful. Father Caspar Wanderdrossel believed in his Bell as he believed in his Specula, and he believed he had to use the Bell to reach the Specula, and he believed that everything he was doing was for the greater glory of God. And as faith can move mountains, it can surely overcome waters.
So there was nothing to be done but set the bell back on deck and prepare it for immersion. An operation that kept them busy till evening. To treat the hide in such a way that it was both impermeable to water and airtight, they had to prepare a paste over a slow fire, mixing three pounds of wax, one pound of Venetian turpentine, and four ounces of another varnish used by carpenters. Then the hide had to absorb that substance; so it was left to sit until the next day. Finally, with another paste made of pitch and wax they had to caulk the edges of the window, where the glass had already been fixed with mastic, then tarred.
“Omnibus rimis diligenter repletis,” Father Caspar said, and spent the night in prayer. At dawn they examined the bell, the straps, the hooks. The Jesuit waited for the right moment, when the reflux could best be exploited and the sun was high enough to illuminate the sea before him, casting all shadows behind his back. Then the two men embraced.
Father Caspar repeated that it would be an enjoyable enterprise in which he would see amazing things such as not even Adam or Noah had known, and his one fear was of committing the sin of Pride—proud as he was of being the first man to descend into the sea’s depths. “However,” he added, “this is also a proof of mortification: if Our Lord on the water walked, I will walk under,
